In July 1992, attorneys for the Minnesota Legal Aid Society and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) filed suit in federal district court on behalf of a group of plaintiffs living in public housing in Minneapolis alleging that the public housing and Section 8 programs in the city perpetuated racial and low-income segregation. The co-defendants in the Hollman v. Cisneros lawsuit offered to enter into settlement negotiations with the plaintiffs, and in April 1995, a consent decree was signed that committed the co-defendants to a series of dramatic policy changes aimed at deconcentrating family public housing in Minneapolis. In 1999, CURA was contracted by the nonprofit Family Housing Fund and the State of Minnesota to conduct an evaluation of the implementation of the Hollman consent decree. The findings of the three-year evaluation are presented in a series of eight reports, which conclude that the implementation of the consent decree produced mixed results with respect to the construction of replacement housing units, the reductions of race and poverty concentration in public housing in the Twin Cities, and the use of special mobility certificates made available by the decree. This report, the third in the series, serves as the baseline study for conditions on the north side of Minneapolis prior to the redevelopment of the 73-acre project site. The report considers empirical data concerning the economic, social, and physical conditions on the north side, as well as residents' perceptions of the neighborhood. It is intended that the analyses conducted in this report will be duplicated in the future to help determine the impact of the redevelopment on the neighborhood.

Online availability

Download from CURA: 

H1020.pdf